“Come on over to the love seat,” I say. “I’ve got some free time; let’s find out what kind of zany hijinks Jack and the girls get into, okay?”

He smiles weakly and lets me guide him into the love seat, and I sit down next to him. We sit there, my head on his shoulder, and watch three entire episodes of Three’s Company (I guess this basic cable channel is having a marathon), and I try my best to keep the sadness at bay and take this moment in. Because as bad as this is—as frustrated as I get, as worried as I am—it’s only going to get worse. Barring some sort of miraculous overnight medical discovery, he isn’t going to get better. He’s going to forget my name, then he’s going to forget my face, and then he’s going to forget everything.

A fourth episode of Three’s Company starts, that iconic theme song playing, and Dad leans into me. “This is the longest episode of Three’s Company I’ve ever seen,” he says, and even though I feel like crying, I can’t help but laugh.

Chapter Three

If you’re an outwardly optimistic person—someone who dresses in bright colors, who listens to pop music, who looks on the bright side and sees the silver lining and all those other refrigerator magnet clichés—people tend to think you’re, well, kind of dim. Like maybe you don’t know how to read, so you haven’t seen those news articles about the unbearable atrocities happening all over the place every single day. That you’re unaware of the real world, or worse, that you don’t care that people are suffering constantly.

But I’d argue that it’s the opposite. I need my optimism to get me through the day, because if I’m not listening to Christopher Cross sing a smooth jam about sailing, or wearing a heart-printed blouse, or creating some adorable llama-shaped sugar cookies with colorful royal icing, then I might stop to think for a second about what’s actually happening in my life. That my dad is sick, that he’s not going to get better, that my brother left me, that my mom is MIA, that my best friend’s career is blowing up while mine is stalled, that I’m always going to be here while she jets off to New York or Los Angeles.

And that’s, like, the tip of the suffering iceberg. For as bad as I have it, millions of other people have it so much worse. If I stop to think about all that, what am I supposed to do? Curl up in bed and never, ever get out?

No thanks. I’d much rather put on some yacht rock and get on with things.

Which is why, as I drive home from my dad’s facility in the rapidly darkening evening, I’m loudly harmonizing with the Doobie Brothers, even as the weight of stress sits so heavy on my chest that I can barely breathe. I’m just so tired. Before I left Dad’s place, I texted Nick that I wouldn’t be back in to finish off my shift, which he characteristically accepted, promising to call in my well-meaning but incompetent young coworker, Tobin. Now I have to force all thoughts of Dad’s decline out of my head and take a quiz for my online business class about . . . ugh, who even knows what?